Women Rights and its violation

Women Rights and its violation


Author: Aradhaya Singh
              BA LLB, 1st year
              INDRAPRASTHA LAW COLLEGE GREATER NOIDA
The question isn’t who is going to let me, it’s who is going to stop me.
Ayn Rand
Abstract:
International human rights law prohibits discrimination against women in their enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms. The Constitution of India also guarantees the equality of rights of men and women. However in our country India there exists a wide gulf between theory and practice. The society of India is a male dominated society where men are always treated to be superior to society and women. From past to now present time women are discriminated everywhere. The women in India are not treated equally to men and have to face discrimination, injustice, dishonour, disregard in the society. The condition of women in India is miserable. No women is safe in India. Everyday one or the other rape, molestation, sexual harassment cases are there. Acid attack and rape incidents are common nowadays. The paper will throw light on the rights of women in India and that how these rights are being violated in India, by focusing on the various crimes done against them.


    Introduction:
The Constitution of India has granted equal rights to the men and women. According to Article 14- “ The State shall not deny to any person equality before law or the equal protection of laws within the territory of India”.
Article 15 (1) of Indian Constitution states- “ State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them”.
The third clause of Article 15 empowers the State to make special provisions for the protection of women and children.
But today, in India, it seems that there is a wide gulf between theory and practice. The women in India have always been considered subordinate to men. Though the Indian Constitution mandates equality and non- discrimination on the grounds of sex, women is always discriminated, disregarded and dishonoured in Indian society. They are considered as foot of the legs of males. The constitutional dream of gender equality is miles away from becoming a reality.
Though Human rights are the minimum rights which are compulsorily obtainable by every individual as he/she is a member of human society. But it has been found that each and every right of the women is being violated in one or another way. The crime against women in India are increasing at a very fast pace. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) had predicted that growth rate of crime against women would be higher than the population in the coming time and which is coming true day by day. According to recently released NCRB data, Uttar Pradesh tops the chart for the most number of crime against women with 56,011 cases followed by Maharashtra with 31,979 cases and West Bengal with 30,002 cases.
There is a need to discuss the rights of women separately and stop its violation of rights as women represents more than half the population of India, yet she is discriminated and violated in every sphere of her life. Only women are prey to crimes such as rape, dowry, bride burning, sexual harassment, selling and importation, prostitution and trafficking etc. Have you heard the men as a victim to all these crimes? The answer is “NO”. Though government is taking a number of steps to improve the condition of women in India, but there is a long way to go. Although special rights are being g
iven to woman as compared to men, yet there are least beneficial to them.

         WOMEN HUMAN RIGHTS IN INDIA:

  • Right to equality
  • Right to liberty
  • Right to education
  • Right to live with dignity
  • Right to property
  • Right to politics
  • Right to livelihood
  • Right to free choice of profession
  • Right to equal opportunity for employment
  • Right to protection of health
  • Right to work in equitable condition
  • Right to get equal wages for equal work
  • Right to protection from inhuman treatment
  • Right to protection from gender discrimination
  • Right to social protection in the eventuality of retirement, old age and sickness
  • Right to protection from society, state and family system
  • Right to privacy in terms of personal life, family, residence, correspondence etc

        VIOLATION OF WOMEN RIGHTS:

It has been repeatedly said these days women in India are enjoying the rights equal to men
 But in reality she is not enjoying at all the rights as given to her. She is the sufferer of violation of her rights since the past. Not only in earlier times but even nowadays also, women have to face discrimination, injustice and dishonour everywhere. The crimes are increasing day by day in India. Let us see violation of women rights in India from past to present.

 VIOLATION OF WOMEN RIGHTS IN PAST:

           The Indian women exploitation is not the present phenomenon. Rather she is being exploited  from the early times. The women in Indian society never stood for fair status. The following crimes were done against the women in the past times.

1) DEVADASIS:
It was a religious practice in some parts of southern India, in which a women were married to a deity or temple. In the later period, the illegitimate sexual exploitation of the devadasi’s became a norm in some part of the country. They were misused.

2) JAUHAR:
It is the self- immolation of queens and female royals of the Rajput kingdoms of Rajasthan in India, in order to avoid capture and consequent molestation by the enemy. The roots of this practice lie in the internecine warfare among different Rajput clans.
3) PURDAH:
Purdah is a practice among some communities of requiring women to cover their bodies so as to cover their skin and conceal their skin and conceal their form. It curtails their right to interact freely and it is the symbol of the subordination of women.

4) SATI:
Sati is an old
custom in which widows were immolated alive on her husband’s funeral pyre. Although the act was supposed to be voluntary on the widow part, it is believed to have been sometimes forced on the widow to die with her husband. Widows were treated very badly as they were made responsible for the death of their husbands.

VIOLATION OF OTHER WOMEN RIGHTS IN GENERAL:

  • Violation of right to equality and right to gender discrimination: Discrimination between a male and female can be seen everywhere except a few. Discrimination on the basis of sex that is against the girl starts the moment she enters into her mother’s womb. We consider females as Goddess Laxmi but when we discriminate against her where is that consideration of Goddess gone. The child is exposed to gender differences since birth and even nowadays before birth, in the form of sex- determination test known as amniocentesis leading to foeticide and female infanticide that is killing of child before birth in womb of mother. The home, which is supposed to be the most secure place, is where women are exposed to violence. A girl is killed after her birth by different cruel methods in some parts of the country like Haryana, Rajasthan etc even today. Thus the very important ‘ Right to Life’ is denied to women. In India, even today men are considered superior to women and are given much more preference.

  • Violation of right to education: Education is considered as means of development and awareness. Education is the most important thing in everyone’s life. The position of women’s education in India is not all satisfactory. Young girls may be bought up to believe that they are suited only to certain profession or in some cases to serve as wives and mothers. Despite in the improvement in the literacy rate after independence, there continues to be large gap between the literacy levels of men and women. Due to large percentage of uneducated women in India, they are not even of their basic human rights and can never fight for them.

  • Violation of right to live with dignity: eve teasing and sexual abuse: Eve teasing is an act of terror that violates a woman’s body, space and self-respect. It is one of the many ways through which a woman is systematically made to feel inferior, weak and afraid. Eve teasing denies a woman’s fundamental right to move freely and carry herself with dignity, solely on the basis of her sex. There is no particular places where eve- teasers congregate. No place is really safe for women. Roads, buses, train, cinema halls, parks, beaches, even a woman’s house and neighbourhood maybe sites where herself worth is abused.

  • Violation of right from society, state and family system:

    1. Child Marriage: It has been traditionally prevalent in India and continues till today. Discrimination against the girl begins even before their birth and continues as they grow. According to law, a girl cannot be married until she has reached the age of 18 at least. But the girl in India is taken as a burden on the family. Sometimes the marriages are settled even before the birth of the child. Some believe that they marry girls at an early age so as to avoid the risk of their unmarried daughters getting pregnant. Basically this phenomenon of child marriage is linked to poverty, illiteracy, dowry, landlessness and other social evils.So all this indicated that steps should be taken to stop the child marriage.
    2. Dowry harassment and bride burning: The demand of the dowry by the husband and his family and then killing of the bride because of not bringing enough dowry to the in- laws has become a very common crime nowadays. According to survey, around 5000 women die each year due to dowry deaths and at least a dozen die each day in ‘ kitchen fires’.
    3. Rape: Young girls in India are the victims of rape. Almost 255 of rapes are of girls under 16 years of age. Recently in November 2019 gangrape and murder was done of a veterinary doctor ‘ Disha ‘ who was burnt on to fire alive after rape. Another example is of 2012 Nirbhaya gang rape case. The list is endless. The law against rape is unchanged from 120 years. In rape cases, it is very torturing that the victim has to prove that she has been raped. Besides this, the family too is reluctant to bring in prosecution due to family prestige and hard police procedures.
    4. Domestic violence: Wife beating, abuse by alcoholic husbands are the violence done against women which are never publicly acknowledged. The cause is mainly the man demanding the hard earned money of the wife for his drinking. But an Indian woman always tries to conceal it as they are ashamed of talking about it. The pity women are unwilling to go to court because of lack of alternative support system.

    Conclusion:




    Thus, all these violence done against women raises the question mark that how these special rights being given to women are helping them? What are the benefits of framing such
    laws which couldn’t help women when they are out of their homes? Are they really helping them? Will the women really be given an equal status to men one day? All these questions are still unanswered. There is still miles to go to answer questions. All men must treat every female as their own sister, daughter etc.



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    References:
    • Constitutional law- Dr JN Pandey
    • An introduction to sociology- DR Sachdeva and Vidya Bhushan
    • Crimes in India, NCRB, Ministry of Home Affairs
    • Criminal law

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